Jonny May has been told to stop worrying about North Korea - and sort out Leicester’s problems instead.

The eccentric England wing signed for Tigers in the summer - six months after declaring his ambition to “fix the situation” in the land of Kim Jong Un.

And despite three tries in his first two games England’s biggest club have lost both and languish one place off the foot of the Premiership.

Which makes Saturday’s home clash against May’s former club Gloucester a must-win and Tigers’ boss Matt O’Connor has demanded it gets his undivided attention.

“Jonny’s got bigger issues than North Korea!” said the Australian. “I wouldn’t worry too much about them. Let’s worry about Saturday.”

There has always been pressure and expectation on Leicester to succeed, but rarely has it been billed in these terms.

Since May’s madcap suggestion to England team mate Ben Te’o that they take a backpacking trip to Pyongyang “before things get really bad”, things have done exactly that.

Yet at Welford Road even the prospect of the Great Leader trading blows with Donald Trump pales alongside the need to get a first win of the season.

“We can’t afford to lose at home,” said O’Connor. “We need to fix things that let us down last week. We need to do better across the board.”

May, 27, is one player who has delivered since Tigers bought him out of the final year of his Gloucester contract in a deal which sent cash and Ed Slater in the opposite direction.

The brilliance of his try at Northampton last week confirms he has not been distracted from the job in hand - even by a letter he claims to have received from the North Korean Embassy offering to take him on a tour.

“It demonstrated that Jonny is a world class finisher,” said O’Connor. “He’s scored a couple of tries in the last two weeks that most humans wouldn’t score.”

O’Connor has long been a fan of the England flyer and revealed he tried to sign him five years ago during his last coaching spell at Leicester.

“We had a couple of very serious conversations face to face when Alesana (Tuilagi) was retiring,” he said. “We needed a finisher of that class and Jonny was the obvious choice.”

May, who has scored nine tries in 27 England appearances, chose to stay put then but this summer decided he needed to leave Gloucester to progress his career.

“It was at that point we had a conversation with him,”: said O’Connor, making clear there was no tapping up. “He can be very good. He’s got big growth in his game.”